Chinese

A Way of Life

Way of Life cover

Some years ago, at the end of a three week business trip across China, two days before I was to leave for home, I contracted amoebic dysentery – or something resembling it at least. Violently ill and rapidly worsening, my Chinese colleagues were urging me to allow them to take me to a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to be treated. Like most who are not familiar with TCM, I recoiled at the idea, preferring to trust my fate to the travel pack of pre-prescribed antibiotics I carried on such trips for just such emergencies.

Herbs and Roots

Herbs Roots cover

It was in Guangdong province that after three weeks of traveling from one side of China, nearly to the other, and back again, that I finally succumbed to an illness that all-but-incapacitated me. As I was struggling to keep anything down – or in – and playing every trick in my travel medicine kit in hopes of stabilizing myself sufficiently for the trip to Shanghai and then the long flight back to Seattle, my Chinese colleagues became increasingly concerned about me and in earnest efforts to help suggested that I allow them to take me to a traditional medicine practitioner.

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